Birding is the best. It’s Pokémon Go but more unpredictable and real. There are few educational thrills quite like waking up early in the morning and grabbing your binoculars to travel far away, chasing rumors that a rare bird might be pecking at a tree in a graveyard.
I’m biased here, but there’s now scientific evidence to back me up. On January 26, 2017, someone spotted a single Black-backed oriole in a bird feeder in their backyard. It was only the second time the Mexican bird had been spotted in the United States. At least 1,800 birders visited the home, some coming from as far as Canada, to see it until April 10, 2017, when it departed. A team of Australian researchers amounted the economic value of the single bird’s appearance at $223,000.
The birding community can be a diehard bunch, with many sharing their rare bird spots on twitter (lol) and other apps, or reporting and calling rare bird hotlines weekly, and then heading out to spot. I’ve heard stories from more die-hard birders about driving many miles away, causing traffic jams on country roads during migration season or following news of a vagrant bird visiting from Mexico or Europe. Some make a competition out of it, as the paper writes:
“This competition was sensationalized by a 2011 Hollywood film starring Owen Wilson, Steve Martin, and Jack Black. These ‘listers’ or ‘twitchers’ often travel great distances, expending significant resources to see rare and/or vagrant birds, often treating birding as a competitive sport, as depicted in the movie.”
The researchers made their calculations using a model based on assumptions about the number of visitors and amount of money they spent. Furthermore, they were able to survey the visitors. After all, the oriole spotters were running the viewing operation out of their backyard, and kept a log of who came.
Obviously it’s just a model, and the analysis required lots of assumptions. But the authors made one thing clear: Birding, especially spotting vagrant birds like this black backed oriole, can have under-appreciated economic value that hotels, motels, and local restaurants might be able to take advantage of.
Also, it rules.
Exposing the Big Game 
Reblogged this on The Extinction Chronicles.
Uplifting news.
I do see some ‘competitive sport’ behavior when it comes to birding – people want to see a ‘new’ and especially a rare, bird for their lists, and completely dismiss the more ordinary birds (I love them all). It is annoying, but it is better than trophy hunting. A trophy of the mind, I guess. And most people do love them all and care about their continued existence.
I’m glad to see that businesses will recognize the value of ‘non-consumptive’ (blech!, what a word) activities.
Sure beats trophy hunting.
There’s an undertone that I don’t like in this one too – “chasing rumors that a rare bird might be pecking at a tree in a graveyard.”
Graveyard? Birds are seen in many other places besides that. It’s like calling people who care about the environment ‘weirdos’.
Another motto and words to live by:
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Mahatma Gandhi